Saturday, July 18, 2009

The Michael Arrington Matter - Oddly Together

There has been quite the ethics flap over the last 72 hours or so about TechCrunch’s handling of leaked Twitter documents.

Bottom line: Michael Arrington was wrong to distribute any of the leaked material, which was stolen by a hacker. The posting of the documentation is unconscionable. There is no journalistic excuse, or justification for it. The disclosure:

Likely is legally negligent

Violates journalistic ethics

Discloses Twitter trade secrets

Probably interferes with a criminal investigation

Michael Arrington was a lawyer before becoming a blogger mogul. He should know the law. A lawyer and stolen documents go oddly together in a bad way.